Reports

11.01.06

What’s Driving Investment in China?

Steven Barnett and Ray Brooks
Sara Segal-Williams
International Monetary Fund (IMF)
Investment has grown rapidly in China in recent years, reaching more than 40 percent of GDP. Despite good progress on bank and enterprise reforms, weaknesses remain that could contribute to inefficient investment decisions. Manufacturing,...

Reports

11.01.06

Chinese Nuclear Forces and U.S. Nuclear War Planning

Hans M. Kristensen, Robert S. Norris, Matthew G. McKinzie
Natural Resources Defense Council
China and the United States have been aiming their nuclear weapons at each other for decades, but now—with the absence of a definitive enemy such as the Soviet Union—the United States has elevated China to fill the void to help justify modernizing...

Court Favorite

Jonathan Mirsky from New York Review of Books
At seven feet six inches tall and about three hundred pounds, Yao Ming, the basketball superstar who plays for the Houston Rockets, is, for many Americans, the most famous living Chinese. In 2002 he was the number-one overall pick in the National...

Reports

10.10.06

Taiwan-U.S. Political Relations: New Strains and Changes

Kerry Dumbaugh
Peony Lui
Congressional Research Service
The U.S. policy framework for Taiwan was laid down in 1979 when Washington severed official relations with the Republic of China (ROC) on Taiwan and instead recognized the People’s Republic of China (PRC) as the legitimate Chinese government. The...

Reports

10.01.06

How Robust Are Estimates of Equilibrium Real Exchange Rates: The Case of China

Steven Dunaway, Lamin Leigh, and Xiangming Li
International Monetary Fund (IMF)
Increased attention is being paid to assessments of the actual values of countries' real exchange rates relative to their "equilibrium" values as suggested by "fundamental" determining factors. This paper assesses the...

Reports

10.01.06

Amnesty International Calls on China to Start the Process to Sign Up to the New International Criminal Court

Amnesty International
As of 1 October 2006, 102 states had ratified the Rome Statute, establishing the International Criminal Court to prosecute genocide. China is one of only seven nations to vote against. Based on the strong political support expressed for the Court...

Why They Hate Japan

Ian Buruma from New York Review of Books
1.Those who think that the Japanese are a little odd will have been confirmed in their prejudice by the behavior of Prime Minister Koizumi Junichiro during his June visit to the United States. The social highlight was a trip to Graceland, home of...

China’s Great Terror

Jonathan D. Spence from New York Review of Books
Long before August 1966, when immense chanting crowds of young Chinese Red Guards began to mass before Chairman Mao in Tiananmen Square, alerting those in the wider world to the onset of the Cultural Revolution, senior figures in the Chinese...

Reports

09.20.06

People’s Republic of China: The Olympics Countdown—Failing to Keep Human Rights Promises

Amnesty International
This report summarizes a number of Amnesty International's human rights concerns in China—concerns which the organization is continuing to highlight as key areas for reform in the run-up to the Olympics. They are: the continuing use of the...

‘June Fourth’ Seventeen Years Later: How I Kept a Promise

Pu Zhiqiang from New York Review of Books
The weekend of June 3, 2006, was the seventeenth anniversary of the Beijing massacre and also the first time I ever received a summons. It happened, as the police put it, “according to law.” Twice within twenty-four hours Deputy Chief Sun Di of...

Reports

08.01.06

Race to the Bottom: Corporate Complicity in Chinese Internet Censorship

Rebecca MacKinnon
Human Rights Watch
China’s system of Internet censorship and surveillance, popularly known as the “Great Firewall,” is the most advanced in the world. In this report, Human Rights Watch documents how extensive corporate and private sector cooperation—including by some...

Reports

07.11.06

Who’s Manipulating Whom? China’s Currency and the U.S. Economy

Daniel Griswold
Cato Institute
Congress and the Bush administration continue to pressure China to allow its currency to appreciate against the U.S. dollar under threat of trade sanctions. Critics contend “currency manipulation” gives Chinese producers an unfair advantage against...

China: The Shame of the Villages

Jonathan Mirsky from New York Review of Books
1.Published fifteen years ago, Chinese Village, Socialist State, as I wrote at the time, not only contained a more telling account of Chinese rural life than any other I had read; it also produced a new understanding “of the methods by which the...

Reports

05.01.06

Do Financing Biases Matter for the Chinese Economy?

Yasheng Huang
Cato Institute
It is widely acknowledged that China’s financial system is deeply troubled. Its banks have very high nonperforming loan ratios and its stock market has lost 50 percent of its value since 2001 amidst a GDP growth rate averaging some 9 percent a year...

Reports

05.01.06

Does China Save and Invest too Much?

John H. Makin
Cato Institute
China’s much-praised tendency to save and invest over 40 percent of its GDP has become dangerous and destabilizing, both for China and the global economy. China’s avid savers expect to increase their wealth by forgoing current consumption. There are...

Reports

05.01.06

A Framework for Independent Monetary Policy in China

Marvin Goodfriend and Eswar Prasad
International Monetary Fund (IMF)
As China's economy becomes more market-based and continues its rapid integration into the global economy, having an independent and effective monetary policy regime oriented to domestic objectives will become increasingly important...

Reports

04.01.06

Capital Flows, Overheating, and the Nominal Exchange Rate Regime in China

Fred Hu
Cato Institute
The evidence of “hot money” clearly shows that China’s cumbersome system of capital controls is not as effective as officials claim. There is no doubt that the greater openness of China’s economy will certainly generate growing tensions with the...

Reports

03.27.06

Taiwan’s Security: Beyond the Special Budget

Mark A. Stokes
Sara Segal-Williams
American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research
Dr. Chang Ya-chung is a professor of political science at the prestigious National Taiwan University who carries a powerful message: America has lost touch with popular sentiment on Taiwan. Professor Chang leads a growing movement called the...

Reports

03.01.06

Progress in China's Banking Sector Reform: Has China's Bank Behavior Changed?

Richard Podpiera
Sara Segal-Williams
International Monetary Fund (IMF)
Substantial effort has been devoted to reforming China's banking system in recent years. The authorities recapitalized three large state-owned banks, introduced new governance structures, and brought in foreign strategic investors. However, it...

Liu Binyan (1925-2005)

Perry Link from New York Review of Books
Liu Binyan, the distinguished Chinese journalist and writer who died of cancer on December 5, 2005, in exile in New Jersey, at the age of eighty, was an inveterate defender of the poor and the oppressed, a man with a powerful analytic mind. But the...

Reports

02.01.06

Does Inflation in China Affect the United States and Japan?

Tarhan Feyzioglu and Luke Willard
International Monetary Fund (IMF)
With China's share in global trade increasing rapidly, some argued in 2002-03 that China was exporting deflation to other countries as it was dumping cheap goods in mature markets. Later, others argued that China was sucking in commodities and...

Reports

01.31.06

The Dynamics of Provincial Growth in China: A Nonparametric Approach

Bulent Unel and Harm Zebregs
International Monetary Fund (IMF)
China's growth record since the start of its economic reforms in 1978 has been extraordinary. Yet, this impressive performance has been associated with an increasing regional income disparity. The authors use a recently developed nonparametric...

Reports

01.26.06

Ending Financial Repression in China

James A. Dorn
Cato Institute
The consequences of China’s financial repression are easy to see. By suppressing two key macroeconomic prices—the interest rate and the exchange rate—and by failing to privatize financial markets and allow capital freedom, China’s leaders have...

Reports

01.26.06

Ending Financial Repression in China

James A. Dorn
Cato Institute
Chinese economic liberalization largely stopped at the gates of the financial sector. Investment funds are channeled through state-owned banks to state-owned enterprises (SOEs), there are few investment alternatives, stock markets are dominated by...

Reports

01.13.06

The Rise of China and Its Effect on Taiwan, Japan, and South Korea: U.S. Policy Choices

Dick K. Nanto, Emma Chanlett-Avery
Peony Lui
Congressional Research Service
The economic rise of China and the growing network of trade and investment relations in northeast Asia are causing major changes in human, economic, political, and military interaction among countries in the region. This is affecting U.S. relations...

Reports

01.01.06

Seasonalities in China's Stock Markets: Cultural or Structural?

Jason D. Mitchell and Li Lian Ong
Sara Segal-Williams
International Monetary Fund (IMF)
In this paper, we examine returns in the Chinese A and B stock markets for evidence of calendar anomalies. We find that both cultural and structural (segmentation) factors play an important role in influencing the pricing of both A- and B-shares in...

Reports

01.01.06

Turning the Tide: Injury and Violence Prevention in China

Kennett Werner
World Health Organization
Like most countries around the world, productivity (including economic and all other development indicators) in China is very strongly linked to the health of its people. The ability to achieve the Government of China’s overall goal of “xiaokang,”...

Reports

12.09.05

East Asian Summit: Issues for Congress

Bruce Vaughn
Peony Lui
Congressional Research Service
Fundamental shifts underway in Asia could constrain the U.S. role in the multilateral affairs of Asia. The centrality of the United States is now being challenged by renewed regionalism in Asia and by China’s rising influence. While the United...

Reports

12.01.05

“We Could Disappear at Any Time”: Retaliation and Abuses Against Chinese Petitioners

Human Rights Watch
This 2005 report is the first in-depth look at the treatment of Chinese citizens who travel to Beijing to demand redress to their complaints of mistreatment by officials. While petitioning has long been in use in China, it is now on the rise; an...

Reports

11.29.05

China’s Currency: Brief Overview of U.S. Options

Jonathan E. Sanford
Peony Lui
Congressional Research Service
Many are concerned that China’s currency is undervalued and that this injures the U.S. economy. The Chinese authorities say they are not manipulating their currency and they want to move as soon as possible to a market-based yuan. A new exchange...

Reports

11.22.05

Internet Development and Information Control in the People’s Republic of China

Michelle W. Lau
Peony Lui
Congressional Research Service
Since its founding in 1949, the People’s Republic of China (PRC) has often been accused of manipulating the flow of information and prohibiting the dissemination of viewpoints that criticize the government or stray from the official Communist party...

Portrait of a Monster

Jonathan D. Spence from New York Review of Books
1.It is close to seventy years since Edgar Snow, an ambitious, radical, and eager young American journalist, received word from contacts in the Chinese Communist Party that he would be welcome in the Communists’ northwest base area of Bao-an...

Reports

11.02.05

U.S.-China Relations in the Wake of CNOOC

James A. Dorn
Cato Institute
CNOOC, a subsidiary of state-owned China National Offshore Oil Company, lost to Chevron in a bid to acquire Unocal. This loss did not occur because of Chevron's lower bid, but rather because of U.S. Congressional intervention that blocked the...

Reports

10.20.05

How China Should Use Its Foreign Reserves

Deepak Lal
Cato Institute
China’s labor-intensive economic growth over the last two decades allowed the transfer of a vast amount of low-wage labor from both the rural sector and the declining state-owned enterprise (SOE) sector. That allowed China to grow by “walking on two...

China: The Uses of Fear

Jonathan Mirsky from New York Review of Books
Instilling deadly fear throughout the population was one of Mao Zedong’s lasting contributions to China since the late Twenties. In the case of Dai Qing, one of China’s sharpest critics before 1989, fear seems to explain the sad transformation in...

Reports

07.15.05

Hong Kong 2005: Changes in Leadership and Issues for Congress

Severn Anderson
Peony Lui
Congressional Research Service
The Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (HKSAR) has recently recovered from an economic downturn and the SARS virus outbreak of 2002-2003 which crippled trade and tourism. There has also been a major change in top government personnel, with the...

Reports

04.20.05

China’s Growing Interest in Latin America

Kerry Dumbaugh, Mark P. Sullivan
Peony Lui
Congressional Research Service
Over the past year, increasing attention has focused on China’s growing interest in Latin America. Most analysts appear to agree that China’s primary interest in the region is to gain greater access to needed resources—such as oil, copper, and iron—...

Reports

04.15.05

European Union’s Arms Embargo on China: Implications and Options for U.S. Policy

Kristin Archick, Richard Grimmett, Shirley Kan
Peony Lui
Congressional Research Service
The European Union (EU) is considering lifting its arms embargo on China, which was imposed in response to the June 1989 Tiananmen Crackdown. France, Germany, and other EU members claim that the embargo hinders the development of a “strategic...

Chinese Shadows

Ian Buruma from New York Review of Books
There are many reasons for getting tattooed. But a sense of belonging—to a group, a faith, or a person—is key. As a mark of identification a tattoo is more lasting than a passport. This is not always voluntary. In Japan, criminals used to have the...

Reports

03.07.05

Nonmarket Nonsense: U.S. Antidumping Policy toward China

Daniel Ikenson
Cato Institute
In stark contrast to its broader restraint in the face of anti-China protectionist pressure, the Bush administration has adopted an unabashedly bellicose approach to antidumping matters. The administration should take a hard look at its antidumping...

Reports

03.01.05

Japan, China, and the U. S. Current Account Deficit

Richard H. Clarida
Cato Institute
Exchange rate protectionism is a subject much in the news these days, especially in regard to the actions of Japan and China in foreign exchange markets and in the financing of the U.S. current account deficit.

Reports

03.01.05

European Union’s Arms Control Regime and Arms Exports to China: Background and Legal Analysis

Richard F. Grimmett, Theresa Papademetriou
Peony Lui
Congressional Research Service
In recent months, discussions have been held within the European Union (EU) on the question of lifting the embargo on arms exports to the People’s Republic of China that was imposed on China on June 27, 1989. The prospect that the EU would lift its...

China: Wiping Out the Truth

Perry Link from New York Review of Books
Somehow poison got into the food at a snack shop in Nanjing, China, on September 14, 2002, and more than four hundred people fell ill. After forty-one of them died, the official Xinhua News Agency posted a notice warning of contaminated food in...

Reports

01.01.05

Exchange Rate and Monetary Policy in China

Nicholas R. Lardy
Cato Institute
China's account surplus has increased sharply as a product of economic growth and manipulation of its undervalued currency. This paper argues that China's account surplus is actually higher than reports indicate. China’s monetary...

Passage to China

Amartya Sen from New York Review of Books
1.The intellectual links between China and India, stretching over two thousand years, have had far-reaching effects on the history of both countries, yet they are hardly remembered today. What little notice they get tends to come from writers...

Taiwan on the Edge

Jonathan Mirsky from New York Review of Books
The events in Taiwan since March 19, the day before the presidential election, can be seen as a Taiwanese version of the long wrangle between Al Gore and George W. Bush more than three years ago. No matter how the election is resolved, something...

Reports

05.20.04

China-U.S. Relations: Current Issues for the 108th Congress

Kerry Dumbaugh
Peony Lui
Congressional Research Service
During the George W. Bush Administration, U.S. and People’s Republic of China (PRC) foreign policy calculations have undergone several changes. The Bush Administration assumed office in January 2001 viewing China as a U.S. ”strategic competitor.”...

The Party Isn’t Over

Jonathan Mirsky from New York Review of Books
1.Early in the years following China’s post-Mao reforms, a Chinese sociologist told Princeton’s Perry Link, “We’re like a big fish that has been pulled from the water and is flopping wildly to find its way back in. In such a condition the fish never...

Chiang’s Monster

Jonathan D. Spence from New York Review of Books
1.During the late 1930s and World War II, it was common to call Dai Li “China’s Himmler,” as if Chiang Kai-shek’s secret police and intelligence chief during that period performed functions similar to the head of the Gestapo and the SS under Hitler...

Reports

12.31.03

Health Policy and Systems Research in China

Qingyue Meng, Shi Guang, Yang Hongwei, Miguel A. González-Block, Erik Blas
Luo Xiaoyuan
World Health Organization
This document, prepared by the China Network for Health Economics, WHO, TDR, and the Alliance - HPSR, is a product of the Health Policy Forum held in May 2004 in Beijing, with the participation of high-level policy-makers from central and provincial...

The Hong Kong Gesture

Jonathan Mirsky from New York Review of Books
On September 5, in an astonishing victory for liberty in Hong Kong and an equally unexpected defeat for Beijing and its hand-picked chief executive, Tung Chee-hwa, the Hong Kong government withdrew a proposed new law against subversion and treason...

Reports

10.01.03

Demand-Side Management in China

Barbara Finamore, Dr. Hu Zhaoguang, Li Weizheng, Lei Tijun, Dai Yande, Zhou Fuqiu, Yang Zhirong,
Natural Resources Defense Council
A major challenge for China’s policy makers is to determine how best to provide the necessary energy to fuel China’s extraordinary economic growth. The traditional approach has been to rely on increasing the supply of conventional energy resources,...

Reports

09.01.03

A Simple Solution to China's Pension Crisis

David D. Li and Ling Li
Cato Institute
China’s rapidly aging population, strong economic growth, and high return on capital mean that a funded pension system would be more efficient than a state-directed system. Yet, there are many problems in implementing a new privatized pension system...

Reports

08.06.03

China and the World Trade Organization

Wayne M. Morrison
Peony Lui
Congressional Research Service
After many years of difficult negotiations, China, on December 11, 2001, become a member of the World Trade Organization (WTO), the international agency that administers multilateral trade rules. Under the terms of its WTO membership, China agreed...

Reports

08.01.03

Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC), Free Trade, and the 2003 Summit in Bangkok, Thailand

Dick K. Nanto
Peony Lui
Congressional Research Service
On October 20-21, 2003, the Eleventh APEC Leader’s Meeting is to be held in Bangkok, Thailand. The theme for APEC 2003 is “A World of Differences: Partnership for the Future,” which is intended to bring together the best potential of all APEC...

On Leaving a Chinese Prison

Jiang Qisheng from New York Review of Books
“What I did, what landed me in prison, was really quite simple—I just said in public what my fellow citizens were saying in all those other nooks.” —Jiang Qisheng

A Little Leap Forward

Nicholas D. Kristof from New York Review of Books
The Communist dynasty is collapsing in China, and in retrospect one of the first signs was a Chinese-language computer virus that began spreading when I was a reporter in Beijing in the early 1990s. The virus would pop up on your screen and ask a...

AsiaWorld

Ian Buruma from New York Review of Books
To stand somewhere in the center of an East Asian metropolis, Seoul, say, or Guangzhou, is to face an odd cultural conundrum. Little of what you see, apart from the writing on billboards, can be described as traditionally Asian. There are the faux-...

How the Chinese Spread SARS

Jonathan Mirsky from New York Review of Books
Communist China’s long obsession with secrecy is one cause of the present SARS (Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome) crisis. This passion for secrets—protected by lies—can involve events more than forty years ago, and it is heightened by a conviction...

Reports

05.16.03

Taiwan’s Accession to the WTO and its Economic Relations with the United States and China

Wayne M. Morrison
Peony Lui
Congressional Research Service
After several years of negotiations, Taiwan joined the World Trade Organization (WTO), the international organization that sets rules for most international trade, on January 1, 2002. Taiwan’s WTO membership is expected to accelerate trade and...